<I>Tribune</I> looking into <I>Times</I> mirror

Maybe it should take a page from L.A.s book

After Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times won five Pulitzer Prizes in April, top editors at the Chicago Tribune--shut out for the second time in three years--shrugged.

"There's been some Pulitzer-related discussion, certainly," says James Warren, deputy managing editor in charge of the Tribune's features sections. "But we're not looking at (the Times) as a template."

Perhaps they should. It's widely believed in the news business that turning around a big-city daily is next to impossible, with hundreds of reporters, photographers and editors too busy getting the day's paper out to change the way they do it. What's more, a tendency to promote from within at most big papers and a not-invented-here mind-set make large news organizations surprisingly averse to change.

In Los Angeles, Tribune inherited a paper that was already considered top-notch. Yet the management team it installed energized the Times with a series of changes that it appears could be applied to other papers.

"That's one of the seminal questions that all diversified businesses face," says James Schrager, a professor of strategic management at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. "The right way to do this is to do some serious analysis and find out if what worked there can work here. They have a responsibility to explore that."

But Tribune executives chafe at the notion that their other papers--which include New York's Newsday, the Baltimore Sun and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel--need an L.A.-style makeover. "No, that's not something we're trying to do," says Gerould W. Kern, vice president of editorial at Tribune.

Mr. Kern says the company already leverages the editorial strength of the Times by running its stories in other company newspapers. Between 2001 and 2003, the number of stories shared by Tribune-owned newspapers tripled. The June 2 Tribune, for instance, featured 12 stories produced by other Trib-owned properties, including six from the Times.

The turnaround at the Times, however, went far beyond using a better brand of wire copy.

Tribune bought the parent of the Times, Times Mirror Co., in 2000, shortly after the paper had been embroiled in a scandal over cooperation between its editorial and advertising departments, traditionally separate at newspapers. Advertising executives at the paper had agreed to split ad proceeds from a special section about Los Angeles' new Staples Center arena with the center itself, essentially partnering on the business side with an entity the news side was covering.

Despite the embarrassment, the Times remained a top-flight paper, winning four Pulitzers between 1998 and 2000, the same number as the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post each won during that period, and twice as many as the Tribune did.

Yet the new management team installed by Tribune revamped it anyway. New Editor John Carroll--hired away from the Baltimore Sun--raided the New York Times, Washington Post and other leading papers to fill out top editing ranks. His new team of editors quickly identified the Times' weaknesses and set about addressing them.

The Times' metro coverage, long criticized as unfocused because the paper tried to double as both an intensely local source and a regional authority, was an early target. Mr. Carroll eliminated 14 tiny community sections, known as "Our Times," and instead focused more on major political figures and institutions, such as Los Angeles International Airport. He also folded in state news that formerly ran on Page 3 of the first section. The new metro section, titled "California," carries stories that might be of statewide interest rather than trying to target stories to each town, a grim exercise that many papers have taken on to battle more-local publications.

When it came to the Times' national and international coverage, Mr. Carroll worked with Publisher John P. Puerner--a Tribune transplant--to clear ads off of pages in the paper's front section. The space immediately became a showcase for some of the paper's best work, such as a Pulitzer-winning series on Wal-Mart Stores Inc., examining how corporate decisions in Arkansas simultaneously affect workers in China and shoppers in Texas.

Sections retooled

Using money saved from the elimination of "Our Times," Mr. Carroll's team invigorated the paper's feature sections, too. One start-up section, "Outdoors," combines sharply written feature stories on nature and people who enjoy it with service pieces such as lengthy surfing, fishing and bird-watching reports. One recent "Outdoors" featured a highly detailed account, written like a crime story, of a team of killer whales stalking along the Monterey coast.

Just as the "Outdoors" section taps into the active lifestyles of many Californians, a reworked auto section, "Highway 1," connects with another L.A. reality: People who live there spend a lot of time in their cars. Most papers front their auto ads with straightforward, utilitarian descriptions of how cars drive and how various automakers are faring. But the Times' Dan Neil won a Pulitzer this year for his offbeat column. It's as likely to muse on hip-hop culture's embrace of the Cadillac brand, or on "tuner" car culture (made famous in the movie "The Fast and the Furious") as it is to put the newest Mercedes through its paces.

By contrast, the Tribune's most recent new section initiative, "Q," doesn't seem particularly rooted in Chicago, or even the Midwest. The section--which aims to lure young readers with shorter, pithier stories and a higher pop-culture quotient--recently led with stories focused on the correlation between humidity and bad hair, the comeback of 1950s chirpiness and a bushel of self-help features.

Auto consideration

The Tribune's Mr. Warren says Mr. Neil's car column has given him cause to rethink the Trib's auto pages. But he doesn't see much else to emulate, even in areas where the paper won its Pulitzers.

"What'd they win for? Editorials. Well, I'd say we have a better editorial page, by and large," says Mr. Warren. "They won for photography. I think ours is as good as anybody. . . .Front to back, I'd argue that our features still remain stronger day-to-day. . . .And no paper has done better (long-term reporting) projects in recent years than the Tribune. That's a fact."

But Bryce Nelson, a former Chicago bureau chief at the Times who today teaches journalism at the University of Southern California, thinks both the company and the editors at its flagship newspaper are missing the point. "This shows you can make a great newspaper even better, if you want to," he says. "I hope it puts pressure on them to do the same thing at the Tribune."